My 5month old has a REAL hard time calming down for ANYTHING ... he gets real excited and has a hard time listening to the point where often I Have to hold his chin (No pressure just steering his eyes to my face for him to get out of this "Excitement" state)

I've had some real success in him calming down before being let out of his Crate or his outside Kennel he knows now he has to sit and calm no whining and look at me and he gets let out.

But people... holy crap he turns into a MONSTER with people... I generally make him sit, then have the person come to him to say hello. But he's just a twitchy ball of STUPIDNESS just a plan Goof in anticipation to being pet by this new person.

And I'm wondering is this an AGE thing or a I'm screwing up as a Trainer thing. One thing to note its now Winter where I am so there isn't much "MEET AND GREET" for me to socialize him to like there was in summer/fall (We did ALOT of socialization then with strangers)

Also my house is a quite house so we don't get a lot of visitors so that's hard as well.

Just at this point he's 50 pounds ... I don't want to be trying to old back him when he's 100

It's both age and training. Things only get harder to fix later. Dogs only do what we allow them to do. At this age you cannot expect a perfectly trained dog but at the same time you do not want to let him grow up all out of control either. So reward good behavior and withhold reward for bad behavior plus manage by using tools like a crate, this way he won't be able to get all nutty when people visit all the time.

I have him sit to great strangers, but he has a HARD time doing this. He will "drop and stay" for a long period of time, he can calm himself down, but people is just crazy especially once they make eye contact because he knows if they want to come over and see him or not.

I'll keep making sure to re-inforce as calm a behavior as I can get out of him and hope age helps this.

to be really helpful, I already had the play pen so it was pretty simple but it's made dealing with visitors SOOOO much easier. Harlow had the same problem, and stayed excited all over my visitors for hours after the novelty of her cuteness had worn off.

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